Hong Kong Meeting

Away for the weekend and unfortunately it wasn't for pleasure. But I planned to make the best of it anyhow.

It was an update event organised by one of the pharmaceutical company, concerning the latest treatment for myeloma and B-cell lymphoma. The drugs would prove to be too expensive for my patients at the moment but at least I got to gauge the direction of the future treatment. The speakers were all from the Asia-Pacific region, and with this, they tended to either speak too fast or cover topics which were rather too scientific. On a few of the lectures, I actually lost interest half way.

The meetings would end by 5 this afternoon, and tomorrow would be half day. But no time to have a look around town except for this evening since my transport would take me straight to the airport straight after lunch tomorrow. Maybe I could squeeze some time for my customary morning walk tomorrow morning.

Back to the lectures .....

More on the trip here.

A Morning of Updates

Thursday is a no clinic day for me. And with the traveling tomorrow, I decided to get some paperwork sorted out as well as doing a bit of reading. Since I spent half the morning at the apartment, I ended up doing some software updating as well. My iPhone, Apple Watch plus the Mac Pro.

So far, the update went on without a hitch. El Capitan had been blazingly fast so far and the update did not cause any issues. The iOS 9.1 was supposed to improve the "Live Photos". I hardly used that anyway. So, I hope that the update would offer some security upgrade in the background.

And then lunch with Anita at the restaurant just down the hill from the apartment.

The boys were having their sixth straight days without school and had started to get cranky. The plan would be to have a quick outing after my afternoon rounds later. It did get a bit boring after a while being cooked up at the apartment.

Guerilla Photography Exhibition

After some issues with last year's edition, the Guerilla Photography Exhibition returned to Avenue K. It was on for a couple of weeks and would run for until this coming weekend. I had the opportunity to visit last Wednesday - it was Awal Muharram then.

Located on the third floor of the newly refurbished Avenue K, the place was quite tricky to find. Reading the Facebook postings on the event, I was expecting a big show. It turned out to be on a much smaller scale than I anticipated.

The show occupied the steps of a pavilion they had there - called the Spanish Steps. The photos were stuck on the the steps forming a cascade upwards. The content was fine but the curation I found problematic. It appeared to be a mishmash of photographers who just landed there and decided to stick their photos. SOme of them clearly with themes - angles of building corners, their cats etc - while others just put up a selection of their favourite snaps, with no back story to capture my attention. I could fine those on some Flickr feed if I wanted to.

And then came the actual printing. Again, there were a lack of standardisation. Some of the prints were excellent with great contrasts and vivid colours. Unfortunately that was not universal. I must say that one could come up with similar prints from their home printers. The size of the prints were also problematic. A3 seemed to be the biggest, if not A2 with a fat frame! The selection lacked punch.

There is a theme here ...And then there was one particular print which I found inappropriate. A photo of an Arabic phrase which is holy amongst Moslem, stuck to its spot at foot level ... an oversight from the organiser if I may say so personally.

I have to point out that putting this print at ankle level is a tad ..... inappropriate ...I support the effort but I felt for the exhibition to have any sort of impact in the future, it would need some serious thinking behind it. And this is sad since I knew some of the people organising the event. I wanted this exhibition to go on, but we need to get it done with a purpose! The venue was OK but maybe it needed better publicity as finding the place could be tricky! Good luck guys!

Finished the Course

Since returning from Bangkok, I had been carrying this niggling cough. With the couple of calls last week and the phlegm turning green, I decided to put myself on antibiotics - because I could!

Fast forward 5 days later, the course was done. Cough was still there but much better. I went through the calls without a problem although it threatened to lose my voice last Sunday. And no fever.

The antibiotics course was completed, and I must confess that this was the first time I actually finished the pack. Now I could understand why my patients sometimes stopped half way. Taking medicine, especially antibiotics when they felt well took some doing! And it would be best to go for a single daily dose regimen rather than 3 times.

Will be traveling to Hong Kong on Friday. Hopefully there would be no more cough then, and I could do a bit of chilling out!

School's Closed Again

It was fast becoming a joke. These days off school due to haze. It was fun for a while, but once it started to become almost predictable, the novelty soon wore off! The school would be closed again tomorrow, and it started to effect the parents as well in terms of them having to scramble days off to sort out their children having to stay in.

Luckily Anita is a stay-at-home Mum, and even then the boys staying at home limited her activities. She couldn't even do her groceries and shopping without taking my reluctant boys along.

The forecast said that the air quality would only improve by Thursday. It was only Monday today. The school might as well be closed for the whole week at the rate we were going. And then there was a small matter of me traveling to Hong Kong this weekend.

The boys watching movie before bed. I am Groot!I asked my boys what were their plans for tomorrow? They said, staying home and playing games .....